Telling Hillary the cruel truth: DAVE NEESE PROVOCATIONS

Hillary keeps fumbling for an explanation why she lost the election despite her phalanxes of support from Wall Street, from celebrities and from the media. And despite having Trump as her opponent.

Her latest excuse: She was too pro-business for her party’s anti-business tastes. Or as Hillary put it in a speech to the “Shared Values Leadership Summit,” her position as “a capitalist” hurt her with the party base. So, as you can see, Hillary remains clueless. Well, let’s see if I can help you out here, Hillary.

You lost, Hillary, because there are tens of millions of people between New Jersey and California who simply can’t stand you. Sorry, but there’s no gentle way to break the news to you. And it’s not just the misogynists, either. If I recollect correctly, Hillary, you lost the white female vote. If you feel you must, you may label this can’t-stand-you sentiment as irrational. But there you have it nevertheless. The explanation for your defeat in a nutshell.

Let’s put it this way, Hillary: You are the insufferably obnoxious, know-it-all kid back in grade school who caused all the other kids to pantomime vomiting when your name was mentioned. Cruel, yes, but there are cruel truths in life that are best faced up to. Meryl Streep, Jon Bon Jovi and other of your celebrity courtiers are never going to level with you like I am, Hillary. If only you could have taken the hint back during that distant debate with Barack Obama. Remember? When pressed on the topic of your lack of likability, he slipped in the shiv, saying in that icy cool way of his that you, Hillary, are “likeable enough.” Talk about damning with faint praise!

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Another thing, Hillary, while we’re being brutally frank here: There are countless numbers of successful professional women, hard-driving and tough, who manage to be so without your off-putting, transparent, ruthless, all-consuming, peasants-outta-my-way ambition. Then there’s that haughty sense of queenly entitlement, Madam Secretary/Senator. This unflattering characteristic of yours is no less true for being frequently remarked upon.

It is, yes, largely the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy that makes the mean observation that you, Hillary, are every man’s ex-wife, every man’s mother-in-law. But the remark also elicits guffaws in Democratic circles. And nods of agreement. A know-it-all, Hillary, puts himself (or herself) at a big enough disadvantage with that annoying trait alone. But a self-righteous, sanctimonious know-it-all disadvantages himself (or herself) all the more so. And that’s you to a T, Hillary — self-righteous, sanctimonious know-it-all.

Your manner, your tone, your rhetoric all cast you as something of a public scold. Is that perception because you’re a woman? To a some extent, yes, no doubt. But not entirely. There’s a circular bossiness about you, Hillary, that proclaims: “I must be put in charge because...well, because I must be put in charge.”

Yes, there are plenty of males who exhibit these same repelling characteristics. And yes, yours, Hillary, likely stand out in starker relief just because of your gender. The point is yours do stand out. Your butt-in, take-charge bossiness has been excused by some as the byproduct of your Methodist, social-action, do-gooderism. The New York Times’ Amy Chozick suggests so in her catty, snarky but still essentially Hillary-admiring hagiography, “Chasing Hillary.” But many people know Methodist females who don’t fit that stereotype. (Two of my own sisters, both Methodists, managed to be successful professional women AND Democrats without the know-it-all, sanctimonious bossiness.)

Then there’s your insincerity, Hillary. You reek of it. My apologies for having to say so. True, insincerity is to politics as winter snow is to Minnesota. Abundant. But perhaps the consultants over-coached you in an effort to compensate for your insufferable hallway-monitor officiousness. That pop-eyed, crazed grin and pointing in faux recognition to individuals in the audience as you take the stage is way, way, way over-the-top phony, Hillary.

Hillary, were it not for your many grating qualities, even the Deplorables might put up with the sharp corners you have always cut on the truth. (Benghazi was a protest over an anti-Muslim video; you were subjected to a harrowing sniper attack upon landing in Bosnia one time; you were named after Sir Edmond Hillary, the off-the-grid email system had official approval and involved no classified material, etc., etc., etc.)

To give you your due, however, there’s sometimes a kernel of truth in what you say, Hillary. You now say that you lost because you are a “capitalist,” and the Democratic Party is increasingly hostile to capitalism. For certain, there are indeed many of the socialist-inclined in the party who do yearn for lots of “free” government stuff such as the avuncular coot, Bernie Sanders, temptingly proffers. But, again, Hillary, your spin encounters tire-deflation traffic spikes, in the form of glaring facts. It was not so much your affinity for Adam Smith that dismayed many in your party, Hillary, as it was your unseemly, avaricious relationship with capitalism’s plutocracy.

In a span of two years, 2013-15, you collected nearly $22 million in speech fees from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup and other such establishment enterprises. (You returned to the Goldman Sachs Wall Street well over and over.) And your hubby Bill harvested even more millions upon millions from these special interests. Meanwhile, the two of you — but especially you, Hillary — savaged Republicans for catering to the corporate elite. Which of course the Republicans indeed do. But you are hardly the best choice to take on the task of pointing this out. You, after all, fairly leapt at the opportunity to have big business fork-truck skid-loads of boodle to your throne.

Your rationale was classically Clintonian, Hillary. Which is to say slickly evasive. Yet another of your endearing qualities. You rationalized those millions of dollars in speech fees from big business as playing ball with mammon so that you could serve God through the intervening institution of government. These words may have a familiar ring to you, Hillary: “No man can serve two masters...You cannot serve God and mammon.” If that sounds to you like a line from one of your preachy speeches, Hillary, you are not entirely incorrect.

So there you have my blunt counsel, Hill. Don’t bother to thank me. I’m only too glad to have been of such help as I could.